Electrical apparatus such as communication and computer equipment oftentimes require a large number of parallel transmission paths for interconnecting various components of the equipment. In such applications, optical fiber cables are increasingly being used as the transmission path medium. Typically, the electrical apparatus has circuit structures mounting laser devices, each having an electrical terminal affixed to conductor paths of the circuit structure. The laser devices also have an optical terminal which is required to be optically coupled with a fiber of an optical cable. Alignment of a laser device optical terminal with a fiber of the optical cable is particularly difficult due to a requirement that the fiber must be precisely positioned and aligned with respect to the optical terminal of the laser device.
Elaborate structures have been devised to couple laser device optical terminals with fibers of the optical cable. One such structure has a surface etched to form alignment pedestals with vertical walls wherein a mounting procedure is performed on a heated stage using a vacuum pick to securely manipulate a laser device against an alignment pedestal to couple the laser device optical terminal with an optical fiber. Another structure uses an index design that requires an alignment plate for defining the position of a laser device optical terminal with an optical fiber.
Electrical apparatus is often constructed with circuit structures which are interconnected to form the electrical apparatus. To interconnect the circuit structures optically, the circuit structures mount laser devices which are coupled by the above set forth structures to ones of the optical fibers. Many of the circuit structures are circuit boards which are plugged into backplanes designed to interconnect the plug-in circuit boards to form the electrical apparatus. The circuit boards are originally plugged into the backplanes to initially construct the electrical apparatus. The circuit boards may be removed to repair the apparatus, added to update the apparatus and changed at other times for various other purposes.
A problem arises in that the use of the above set forth elaborate structures results in the attachment of the optical fibers to the circuit structure laser devices that make it impossible to remove a circuit structure from the electrical apparatus without destroying the existing structure. The destruction of the structure makes it necessary to build another structure to couple the new circuit structure laser devices with the optical fibers. Accordingly, a need exists for connector apparatus for connecting an optical cable with laser devices and in particular, for connecting optical fibers and laser devices with plug-in types of circuit boards.